I have come to the conclusion that achievements are pointless. They are an attempt for the developer to make you play their game more because it is lacking content. I just beat Dead Space (review to come this week) not more than an hour ago. One of the achievements is to put 25 items in the safe. The safe is a storage area that you can access at any store in the game. You can put stuff in it at one point, then retrieve it later on down the line at another store. Yes, thats right, you get it by physically taking 25 items and put them in the safe. This is not an achievement as the title describes it to be. If there was another list, lets say it was called “Fucking Waste of Time List”, then it would be a good fit. If stock piling shit for fun is not your thing, you can try jumping in zero gravity 100 times. That one takes skill.
Yep. The lack of content is why we have shit achievements like this. I like the achievement idea, but it is not used correctly. It should be used to solely track your way through the game, so comparing points with your friends actually means something. For instance, X number of gamer points for beating each level is an actual use for achievements. Beating the game on a certain difficulty is good example too. These way you get points for actually achieving something, and not wanting to shoot yourself in the face because you have to play through the game again using only the pistol just to get some gamer points. Yeah, that sounds fun, play the exact game I just played. Again. Only this time make if more drab by limiting me to using less shit. Good idea.
For now on I am going to ignore achievements. I am going to play through my games not giving a shit. Whatever achievements I get I will be happy with, and whatever I miss is most likely a waste of time anyway. I guarantee it is more fun this way.
I'm going to have to agree with you, as much as you might have hoped for an argument! Despite my relatively high gamerscore of 28,670, most of is was done through straight gameplay. I'm definitely a fan of fun over challenge. When achievements make games so frustratingly not fun, it's time to put in another game. Mindless collecting, is one of my biggest pet peeves. Assassin's Creed is a perfect example. I have every achievement in that game other than the flag collection achievements, which are lengthy, thorough explorations of every corner and alley of every province in the game. Even with an online guide, which you should never give in to doing for this anyway, it is entirely too time consuming for no reward. GTA IV's pigeon collecting is on the same level. Fable II, however, has a collection of sorts in the form of shooting Gargoyle statutes on structures and buildings. Ya know, Gothic architecture-style. Anyway, you don't have to stray off the beaten path and can accomplish this while on your main quest. There is also in game rewards for doing so. This sort of collection I can deal with.
On another note, what has 28,670 achievement points given me? Free XBOX Live downloads, Microsoft Points, a friggin' keychain? No. I can brag about nothing to my friends who don't care in the first place.
Before I owned my 360 I was told about the achievements process and thought it was great. It made me want the system more because I thought, in the end, something might come of it. 3 years later I have all these points and nothing to show for it. Don't get me wrong, I like hearing the sound of an achievement popping up on the screen and I DO try to get what I can out of the particular game I'm playing, however contrary to popular belief I am not an achievement whore and I end a game when it's no longer any fun.
While the actual achievements do piss me off, it is the effect that that they have on the gaming community that really gets me. There are people out there who really care about achievements. It's a big thing for them, and they take them very seriously. People like this tend to bring a really negative aspect to games, especially games that use XBL. They interrupt good games and screw up competitive matches by trying to get achievements. The individual goals that achievements are do not correlate well in a social setting like XBL. I think there needs to be some type of achievement screening process when games being developed. I'll do it for free.